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The Fordmakers
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Buddhist origin, or perhaps derives from some common fund of stories about the trials and tribulations of ascetics, is the episode in which a cowherd asked the meditating Mahôvira, who in a previous life had mistreated him, whether he had seen his cows and on not receiving a reply drove blades of grass deep into the cavities of th: ascetic's ears, the removal of which caused him great agony. The earliest reference to this occurs in the mnemonic verse commontary on the Avashyakasutra (AvNiry 525), that is, a text dating from the common era and representing approximately the third or perhaps fourth stratum of the biography, although the elliptical manner in which the theme is referred to implies its earlier existence. A similar incident is described as having befallen the Buddha in one of the oldest sutras of the Pali Canon and it was depicted on several occasions in Buddhist art and literature. 19
The elaborate descriptions found in the Universal History of this particular period of Mahâuîra's life do not serve merely as a narrative preamble to the account of his enlightenment. There was at an early date abstracted from the textual delineation of his austerities what became a stereotyped list of twenty-two 'endurances' (parishaha), physical and mental afflictions which are regarded as encompassing all the difficulties to which Jain ascetics have always been subjected.20 Every Jain monk and nun, through the hardships of fasting and mendicancy, partly replicates Mahâvîra's austerities.
Mahâvîra's Relationship With Makkhali Gosala
The most remarkable episode in the later descriptions of Mahâbîra's pre-enlightenment career is his period of fellow mendicancy with Makkhali Gosala who is generally regarded as having been the head of an ascetic order known as the Ajivikas, the 'Followers of the Way of Life'. Although there are references to Makkhali Gosala in the Buddhist Pali Canon, the fullest source which describes his life is the fifteenth chapter of the 'Exposition of Explanations which is undoubtedly an interpolation into the larger text, showing a consistency and internal coherence unusual in that loosely structured work. 21
According to this Jain story, Makkhali Gosala (the latter part of his name signifies that he was born in a gosala or stable) persuaded Mahâvîra in the second year after his renunciation to
